Super Secret Free Trade Agreement

Presumably in response to the secrecy of the Bush administration, Obama made the promise that his administration would be transparent. Those who have Obama derangement syndrome claim that Obama is a Communist while those with a milder form of the affliction claim that he is a Socialist. His secret Free Trade Agreement seems to take a hammer to his own claim and the fearful fantasies of his foes.

While some information about the Free Trade Agreement has been leaked, there was considerable effort to keep its details hidden from not only the voters but also the Congress of the United States. Conveniently enough, some of the top corporations were in the know and presumably involved in laying out the details of the agreement.

Not surprisingly, this agreement seems to be incredibly beneficial to multinational corporations at the expense of sovereign nations and their citizens. For example, the agreement seems to include provisions that allow corporations to sue sovereign states if their laws (such as environmental laws against fracking in certain areas) would impede their profits. These lawsuits would apparently be brought in an international court with authority over sovereign states.

As might be imagined, some of the folks on the left (including people who are real communists and socialists) find this agreement to be of considerable concern. After all, it seems that it is tailored to grant corporations considerable advantages and to infringe on the usual rights of states.

Interestingly, this agreement should also bother many of the folks on the right. While there is obviously a strong pro-corporate camp among conservatives, there is also a strong element that has long been opposed to the notion of world-government and strongly opposed to the idea of the United States being subject to international courts. These people, if they are consistent, would presumably be as opposed to this agreement as they were to other proposals to limit American sovereignty.

That said, there does seem to be a difference between the past cases and the proposed agreement. In the past, those who opposed impositions on American sovereignty were generally imposing attempts to limit what the United States could do. For example, attempts to get the United States to accept internationally based limits in regards to environmental issues were strongly opposed. The rhetoric used included appeals to national sovereignty. Of course, this appeal to sovereignty was beneficial to corporations—they could exempt themselves from laws imposed by other nations behind the shield of United States sovereignty.

In contrast, the proposed agreement removes the shield of sovereignty in ways that are beneficial to the corporations. Obviously, it is rather useful to corporations to be able to hide behind the shield of a sovereign nation when they want to do things they would otherwise be prevented from doing and have that shield set aside when they want to do things to a sovereign nation.

It will be interesting to see how those who influence the conservative base will sell the proposed agreement to those they have long trained to cry out against world government and impositions on sovereignty. My guess is that they will make use of the magic words “free trade” and “free market” to sell the imposition on sovereignty. I also suspect they will make use of the notion that they have been pushing for quite some time, namely the idea that government is a bad thing.

Those who get the notion of consistency will, of course, note that the only consistent principle in use here is the idea that what is good for the profits of the few is good, whether what is good for profits defending national sovereignty in one case or ignoring that sovereignty in another.

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Mike, if you think Obama is being a good capitalist by cozying up to big corporations you are profoundly mistaken. A good capitalist wants a level playing field for all, and a good capitalist is suspicious of large concentrations of economic power because they tend to distort the market.

All hard core communist leaders throughout history were really just crony capitalists. They and their friends got all the stuff they wanted and needed and they refused to live under a system that didn’t work.

In a capitalist system, the government should serve as a referee and not join the game on one side or another. As soon as the government joins the game, the game changes to “who can influence the government the best.”

This is clearly what Obama has encouraged and what has happened. He has actively punished companies who have not properly sucked up to the Administration.

“The Order of Illuminists was founded on May 1, 1776, by a professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, Adam Weishaupt, and four associates. The order was secret and hierarchical, modeled on the Jesuits (whose long domination of Bavarian education ended with their abolition by the Papacy in 1773) and dedicated to Weishaupt’s Rousseauian vision of leading all humanity to a new moral perfection freed from all established religious and political authority. Weishaupt did not so much invite intellectuals to join his new pedagogic elite as taunt them to do so. He radiated contempt for men of the Enlightenment who “go into ecstacies over antiquity, but are themselves unable to do anything,” and insisted that “what is missing is the force to put into practice what has long been affirmed by our minds.”

“Clearly, there were those who understood that the development of the new world was inspired by Bacon and his occult philosophies. It was Bacon who said, “Knowledge is power,” and the pursuit of knowledge through scientific discovery has guided the success of America. If one reads The New Atlantis, where Bacon describes a society with tall buildings, flying machines, weapons of mass destruction, health spas, the magnification of sound, and experiments with poisons on animals for the purpose of curing human beings, it becomes readily discernible that our country has followed his blueprint from the start.”

Joe Bidden: “A new world order”
G.H.W. Bush: “A new world order”
Henry Kissinger: “A new world order”
John Kerry: “A new world order”

The phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum (New Order of the Ages) appears on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, first designed in 1782 and printed on the back of the United States one-dollar bill since 1935.